Akufo-Addo breaks silence on ‘parked’ ambulances

President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has justified why 96 out of the 275 ambulances are currently parked at the State House.

The issue of these parked ambulances emerged after the Minority side on Parliament’s Health Committee gave the government the ultimatum to immediately release the ambulances or risk further public agitations.

Others joined in the campaign indicating that there is no reason for the ambulances to be parked while people are dying.

The Minister for Special Development Initiative, Mavis Hawa Koomson under whose purview the distribution lies in an interview on Neat FM said the assertion that failure to deliver the ambulances to the constituencies could increase the deaths of unfortunate Ghanaians, is neither here nor there, since “people started dying a long time ago”; a statement many have described as 'insensitive'.

On Friday, a journalist asked the President why the ambulances were parked during this year's Encounter with the media series.

In response, President Akufo-Addo thus disclosed that not to be accused of being bias, he has directed that by the first week of January, 2020, the Ambulances must be delivered to every constituency as promised.

"The Minister for Special Development Initiative told me some of the ambulances were in and asked if she should distribute them and I said NO; she shouldn't. She should wait for the others to come in so that we can distribute all at the same time...Fortunately for us all of them will be in by the end of this month and on the 6th of January, I will commission them and the distribution will take place simultaneously and nobody will accuse me of favouritism, and so on. There is no justification on they being parked but if I was to send it here and not here I think you know the kind of discourse that will come," he stated.